Chapter 4

My first instinct was to jump to the side, but I ignored it as I chopped at its ankles, my iron sword bouncing off

I needed to figure out how to get at this giant beast, any blow to its legs didn't harm it in the slightest. I saw that a few of the buildings in town were damaged, in the shape of blocks

I grinned and ran towards the rubble

[…]

Cheerful was regretting jumping out of the air balloon, but she didn't have much of a choice when she saved her friend, but where was Chris? Crystal seemed to be doing a decent job of keeping them alive the same way he would

Skarfly seemed to be doing a bit of climbing and jumping, he didn't appear to be experienced in the art of parkour

As he jumped there were a few he overshot, but mostly he had to grab onto edges in order to keep climbing up

'What is he doing that for?' Cheerful thought to herself

"Look alive" Crystal loosed a few arrows, "That thing isn't happy about us."

Cheerful wasn't sure what she could do, she saw Skarfly's sword bounce off like nothing, there wasn't a lot left to do

But then she noticed that Crystal's arrows were piercing the skull, and sticking as it advanced

There was a connection, Skarfly was climbing to the top of town hall in order to get a shot at its head!

[…]

The cold wind only picked up the higher I climbed, as I clutched the pole on top of town hall and shimmied my way to the top, I only had one shot at this

I balanced myself on the top, behind the wither skeleton, I reared back with my sword in hand and chucked it as hard as I could

It cut through the air, but I had badly miscalculated my throw and it cut only into the shoulder blade

The skeleton turned around, it was absolutely massive when you were close enough, I was two meters tall and I still didn't get to its ankles

So naturally it towered over the whole town, and me as I stood looking like an idiot on the top of town hall's flagpole

"Heh…Fancy meeting you here." I commented nervously

The skeleton brought down its massive hand, and I jumped out of the way and crashed into a lake

I swam to the surface, the cold water shocking a bit more energy into my already exhausted limbs

'This isn't good' I thought to myself as I was now weaponless, 'We need some backup…'

That was when I noticed who was riding inside a certain hot air balloon, which also just so happened to be equipped with dispensers

[…]

"Spike are you insane!?" I shouted

The baby purple dragon was currently firing the dispenser like a turret gun, and quite effectively too, as the wither skeleton was pelted with arrows from above

But with Spike manning the turret, who was piloting the thing?

That was when a saw a purple mare that I recognized flying the thing, and a rainbow maned companion of hers dropped out wielding a bow

Rainbowdash unleashed a more accurate flurry of arrows while Spike and Twilight were keeping it pinned down

Crystal hadn't stopped firing, and Cheerful threw me her sword

The arrows were good at keeping it still, but this thing needed to be taken down

I began to parkour my way back up, getting to the top of town hall where a rope was hanging, I climbed up and waited for Twilight to fly it into the right position

"You're insane; you know that right?" Twilight asked

"Good thing I am" I smiled, "Otherwise this would never work."

Then I catapulted myself out the side of the hot air balloon, falling through the air right above the skeleton

I drew the sword, and crashed into its skull with quite a bit of g-force

There was excruciating pain, then nothing at all

[…]

There was a throbbing pain in my head, I could hear a beep that sounded like a heartbeat, only from a machine

What was I thinking? I was in a hospital, it made sense because I fell down on top of a skeleton, where would they take me in order to fix me up?

The antiseptic smell only served to prove my suspicions, as I attempted to crack my eyes open

Nothing. Perfect. They didn't even react to the signals from my brain

Then I became aware of a few voices far in the distance, they slowly got closer, and I started to be able to understand them

"Are you sure that black stuff will stop spreading?" a voice asked

"It's just a wither effect, he should be fine as long as he's getting steady regeneration." Another voice answered

"If he dies I'm so going to kill him." A third voice chimed in

I slowly began to regain control of my muscles, starting with my right arm, the one I typically carry my sword in

"See? It's already starting to wear off." The second voice said with confidence, I could tell he was Crystal simply by the way it carried

"That's a miracle" the initial voice said, must have been Twilight

I could feel my eyelids start to flutter, they opened and my suspicions were all confirmed, I had made it out alive

Cheerful threw her arms around my neck, "You're alive, you idiot!"

I coughed, and saw that my chest-plate nor my helmet were in the room

"Where'd my armor go?" I asked

"It shattered to pieces on impact" Crystal answered, "You're lucky you were wearing it, you might have died otherwise."

"I'd have been fine, I can't die yet." I sat up and kicked my legs over the side

"You can't go moving around just yet" Twilight protested

"Get me something to eat and I'll be fine" I said calmly, "I'm a player, survival is what I do."

"Don't get comfy" Cheerful said, "The skeleton had this."

She handed me a note, it was in binary, and I knew who from

01010011 01101011 01100001 01110010 01100110 01101100 01111001 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01101110 01100100 01110011 00101110 00100000 01010011 01110100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01110111 01100001 01111001 00101110 00100000 01001111 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101001 01100101 01101110 01100100 01110011 00100000 01110011 01101000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100110 01100110 01100101 01110010 00101110 00001101 00001010 00001101 00001010 00101101 01001000 01100101 01110010 01101111 01100010 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100101

(Yeah, have fun translating that!)

"What's it say?" Crystal asked

"It's from Herobrine" I said, "Herobrine has returned."